Page 112 of The Caged Viking

“Oink, oink!” he said.

She could feel her face heat. “I said that when I thought you got married while I was gone.”

“Pfff! In such a short time? What does that say about me? Nay, don’t tell me. Oink, oink.”

He was not going to let her forget that. Actually, he was starting to earn the name. “You should talk. How could you have thought I would leave, willingly? Without any warning? With no good-byes?”

He shrugged.

Typical man! Couldn’t admit he was insecure. Just like women were.

Jarl Ingolf said, “You did not tell me, Hauk, that you have such a comely wife.” He leaned forward then and winked at Kirstin.

Hauk stiffened at the wink.

Good. She leaned forward, too, and replied, “Thank you for the compliment, sir. Likewise, I did not realize you were so young. From the descriptions I had been given, I pictured a much older man.”

Jarl Ingolf preened. “Mayhap they spoke of my father, who went on to Valhalla only two winters past.”

“Are any of his wives still living with you at Stormstead?”

“Yea, my mother, along with his first wife, and an aged concubine.”

Holy Sister Wives! “You should have brought them with you,” Kirstin said.

Revna made a snorting sound which pretty much amounted to, “Over my dead body!” Kirstin could guess what it was like at Stormstead with four females vying for household power.

“They would have been more than welcome,” Hauk added, as if just now recalling his duties as a host.

“My mother is ofttimes bedridden,” Ingolf told them, “but I will convey your kind words.”

Nothing was said about the other two women.

That was one good thing about Haukshire. There was no strife among the women, although there would have been, for sure, if Zoya had stuck around.

“I bet you were sorry that you sent Zoya away,” she blurted out to Hauk. “I mean, once I was gone, having another woman to…” Her words trailed off at the glower he cast her way.

“Is that how you justified bedplay with another man, so soon after leaving me?”

She gasped. “I did not…where did you get the idea…” She paused, then said, “Egil.”

“Yea, Egil told me of your ‘activities’ with the JAM person.”

“Activities! Pfff. We merely went out to dinner together.”

“No swiving?”

“No swiving.”

“And that was all? No touching, or rubbing, or kissing?”

“Well…” She could feel herself blushing. “There was kissing, but—.”

He tossed his hands in the air in an “I knew it!” gesture.

“Oh, give me a break.”

“Do not try to say he kissed you and you did not kiss him back. ’Tis ever the way with women to prevaricate thus.”